Tedious and Brief

Each day, the general election campaign in 100 words

Day 30
Wednesday 5 May
David Cameron, emerging from a night-long canvass, said the Conservatives would create the most 'family friendly country in Europe'. Nick Clegg said Labour had introduced 4,000 new criminal offences since 1997, including 'selling a grey squirrel'. Gordon Brown repeated that a Conservative government would endanger the economic recovery. Alex Salmond said he gets on better with Mr Brown than Mr Brown got on with Tony Blair. The polls continued to point to a hung parliament. Ladbroke's predicted the Conservatives would win 315 seats, just short of an overall majority. And so the campaign ended.

Day 29
Tuesday 4 May
Three Labour ministers suggested that voters in Lib-Dem/Tory marginals should vote tactically to keep the Conservatives out. A Labour Party candidate declared that Gordon Brown was 'the worst prime minister Britain has ever had'. Mr Brown, in a speech in Manchester, listed 'free swimming for kids' as one of Labour's achievements in office. Constitutional experts began to speculate that he would be entitled to stay on as prime minister in the event of a hung parliament, at least until he discovered whether his government still commanded the support of the House of Commons. An opinion poll put the Lib Dems well down.

Day 28
Monday 3 May
One poll put the Conservatives on 33%, Labour and the Lib Dems on 28%, while another had the Tories on 34% with the Lib Dems on 29% and Labour on 28%. Nick Clegg accused David Cameron of 'breathtaking arrogance' and of 'measuring the curtains' at 10 Downing Street in preparation for a Conservative victory. Both the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian reported that Mr Cameron would attempt to form a minority government without the Lib Dems but with the support of Ulster Unionists. Gordon Brown was given a standing ovation by an audience of 2,000 community activists in London after a speech on social justice.

Day 27
Sunday 2 May
Mrs Duffy sold her 'story' to a Sunday newspaper. Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg both went to church. Mr Brown told his congregation that Labour 'will not walk by on the other side', while Mr Clegg said the Lib Dems wanted to 'support and help' Labour voters who felt 'let down'. The prime minister described Mr Clegg as 'the next presenter of a TV game show', but did not say which one. Some polls showed a decline in support for the Lib Dems. David Cameron said the 'absurdly long' summer holiday for MPs would be cut and that one of his first acts as prime minister would be to abolish the ID cards scheme.

Day 26
Saturday 1 May
A heckler was ejected from a meeting in Sunderland being addressed by Gordon Brown. The heckler was complaining about the lack of fast broadband in the north-east and lack of access to the prime minister. Mr Brown said that, now the TV debates were over, policy would be 'the centre of people's discussion'. David Cameron admitted that the debates, which he had keenly supported, had made the Liberal Democrat surge possible. The Guardian announced it was supporting the Lib Dems, while the Times said it was backing the Tories. It was thought the only national newspaper endorsing Labour would be the Mirror.

Day 25
Friday 30 April
Gordon Brown said he had to 'dig deeper' after snap polls showed he came third in the last of the TV debates, which was watched by 8.4 million people. The media continued to be obsessed by his remark about Mrs Duffy, an affair now known as 'Bigotgate'. Nick Clegg said the election was a two-horse race between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. He apologised to mental health campaigners for using the word 'nutters' in one of the earlier TV debates. Tony Blair joined Labour's campaign and it was remarked how old he looked for a man of 56. Bookmakers slashed the odds on an overall Tory majority.

Day 24
Thursday 29 April
The last of the 'leaders' debates', renamed 'the prime ministerial debate' by the BBC, took place in Birmingham. At the start, Gordon Brown said he didn't always get it right. David Cameron said that Sir Fred Goodwin of the Royal Bank of Scotland had 'nearly brought the whole economy down'. One questioner asked the leaders to be 'honest about the spending cuts', but only the usual answers were forthcoming. For the third week in succession, there was a discussion on immigration, but no new light on the subject. There was no mention of civil liberties, however, in any of the three debates.

Day 23
Wednesday 28 April
The SNP failed in its court action to compel the BBC to have the party represented in the last of the three 'leaders' debates' on television. The judge, Lady Smith, dismissed Alex Salmond's argument that his absence from the programme breached the BBC's duty to provide impartial election coverage. In Rochdale, Mr Brown was challenged by a Mrs Duffy on immigration. He then returned to his car, with a radio microphone still live, and was heard to call the woman bigoted. The prime minister was roundly pilloried for the rest of the day and the BBC suggested that the incident had cost Labour the election.

Day 22
Tuesday 27 April
The Institute for Fiscal Studies accused the three main parties of not being frank with the electorate about the measures required to repair the public finances. The institute claimed that the parties have 'black holes' of up £52 billion in their published plans for dealing with the deficit and that substantial tax increases are inevitable. David Cameron said that Britain had lost its work ethic and pledged that the Conservatives would restore the country's sense of responsibility. Nick Clegg, in a further clarification of his position on power-sharing, said he would work with 'anyone', including Gordon Brown.

Day 21
Monday 26 April
Policy issues and divisions were set aside as the parties wrangled over the possible consequences of a hung parliament. The Conservatives said that, if no party gained a majority, it would 'paralyse' the UK economy. Gordon Brown said it was arrogant to discuss the question of what might happen until the electorate had an opportunity to vote. Nick Clegg appeared to contradict his message of yesterday. He indicated that he might be prepared to work in coalition with Labour, but not with Gordon Brown as prime minister. He said a hung parliament would put an end to the 'preposterous' voting system.

Day 20
Sunday 25 April
Nick Clegg, in a television interview, dismissed the idea that Labour could continue in power from a third place in the popular vote and hinted that he would have to be prime minister if his party was to join Labour in a coalition government. Conservative strategists suggested that the Labour vote was 'ebbing away', even in some formerly safe seats, giving the party renewed hope of a small overall majority. The Scottish National Party said it hoped to raise £50,000 to enable it to mount a legal challenge against the BBC's decision to exclude it from the third and final televised debate on Thursday.

Day 19
Saturday 24 April
Nick Clegg took the day off to spend time with his family. David Cameron attended the wedding of his sister. Labour seemed to think it could cling to power, even if it was third in the popular vote, by coming to a deal with the Lib Dems to ditch Gordon Brown after the election and replace him with David Miliband. One un-named senior Labour figure described this notion as absurd. Opinion polls suggested that Labour was heading for a bad defeat, or what George Osborne called a rout. Lord Mandelson was reported to have told Harriet Harman to shut up and that he did not wish to hear from her again.

Day 18
Friday 23 April
There was a 0.2 growth in the UK economy between january and March. This tiny improvement was blamed on bad weather and poor retail sales. Four million people watched the leaders' debate last night, almost six million fewer than saw the first. David Cameron repeated his accusation that Labour was indulging in 'fears and smears' in election leaflets which claimed that the Conservatives would scrap such benefits as free bus travel and winter fuel payments. William Hague rejected accusations that his party was behind unfavourable publicity about Nick Clegg in Conservative-supporting newspapers.

Day 17
Thursday 22 April
Liam Fox, the man who could soon be in charge of Britain's defences, felt it necessary to cancel a press conference because his house had been burgled. In the evening, he was caught in the middle of an exchange of gibberish between the foreign secretary, David Miliband, and Lord Ashdown following the 'leaders' debate' in Bristol, televised by Sky TV. The debate itself, mainly on international affairs, was notable for the lack of any discussion of the Iraq war or its legality. David Cameron was declared 'the winner'. The BBC excluded the SNP and Plaid Cymru from the last of the debates next week.

Day 16
Wednesday 21 April
Nominations have closed. Among the parties represented are the Bus-Pass Elvis Party, the Fancy Dress Party, the Get Snouts out of Troughs Party, the Best of a Bad Bunch Party, and the Common Sense Party. David Cameron was pelted by an egg in Cornwall, while Gordon Brown called for 'a progressive alliance to build a new politics'. Nick Clegg described Mr Brown as 'a desperate politician' and said he would find it difficult to work with him in the event of a hung parliament. One opinion poll put the Tories on 35%, eight ahead of the Lib Dems with Labour trailing in third place on 25%.

Day 15
Tuesday 20 April
Alex Salmond, launching the SNP's manifesto, called for a 'balanced' parliament, his preferred version of what is commonly known as a hung one. The SNP would scrap Trident, protect public services from cuts imposed by 'the London-based parties' and create 60,000 jobs in the green economy by the end of the decade. Labour's Jim Murphy, on a live television debate, said a coalition government 'may happen' if the election results in a hung (or balanced) parliament. William Hill, the bookmaker, declared that no one was putting money on Gordon Brown to 'win' the next leaders' debate on Thursday.

Day 14
Monday 19 April
David Cameron, rattled by the rise in the polls of the Lib Dems, which appears to threaten the Conservatives most, scrapped an election broadcast attacking Labour and recorded an alternative version in his garden in which he said a vote for the Lib Dems would lead to a hung parliament with 'more indecision and more old politics'. Behind the scenes, the Tories were said to be in shock about the unxpected turn of events. The Scottish Conservatives, launching their manifesto, said they were targeting 11 seats in Scotland, professed to be unworried by the Lib Dem advance, and pledged to protect the NHS budget.

Day 13
Sunday 18 April
The commentariat was divided in its opinion of Nick Clegg, most favouring the view that he was a one-hit wonder whose popularity would not survive three weeks of detailed scrutiny. All the professional pollsters interviewed by a Sunday newspaper continued to predict a Conservative victory, either in a hung parliament or with a small overall majority. A grinning Gordon Brown, however, was said to be sniffing an unlikely victory with the help of the Lib Dems. David Cameron, in an attempt to win the 'grey' vote, told pensioners he wanted the elderly to become 'an army of volunteers' to help him fulfil his vision of society.

Day 12
Saturday 17 April
Opinion polls conducted after the television debate showed a surge in support for the Liberal Democrats, one poll putting them ahead of the other parties, others showing them second behind the Conservatives. Such are the vagaries of the voting system, these polls would translate into a Labour victory of sorts, with that party emerging as the largest in the House of Commons. Compounding a bad 48 hours for David Cameron, he was caught on television looking uncomfortable when confronted by a homeless ex-soldier who complained that he had failed to return his many telephone calls.

Day 11
Friday 16 April
Nick Clegg was declared 'the winner' of the television debate for being a more convincing voice of political renewal than David Cameron, who finished a distant second in instant opinion polls, with Gordon Brown, as predicted, the least popular of the three. Since so little had been expected of the prime minister, the Conservative leader was declared 'the real loser' and Mr Brown was given some credit for avoiding outright disaster. The volcanic ash from Iceland continued to hang over the campaign and the rest of Britain, distracting attention from the rise and rise of Nick Clegg.

Day 10
Thursday 15 April
A cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland, which grounded all flights in and out of the UK, disrupted the election campaign. The Liberal Democrats called off a visit to Scotland by Vince Cable, although Mr Cable could have reached Edinburgh by train in just over four hours. Labour, likewise, cancelled a trip to Scotland by the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth. Later, the leaders of the three main UK parties somehow managed to get themselves to Manchester for a live television debate described in advance by one of the newspapers as '90 minutes that could change Britain'. It didn't.

Day 9
Wednesday 14 April
At the Liberal Democrats' manifesto launch, Vince Cable called himself the elephant man for being prepared to confront the 'elephant in the room', the national debt. The party pledged to increase the personal tax allowance to £10,000, which it said could be paid for by a clampdown on tax avoidance and other measures, although the other parties said the sums didn't add up. The Lib Dems also pledged to scrap ID cards, Trident, the compulsory retirement ages and the House of Lords, and to break up the banks. The number of MPs would be cut by 150 and PR would be introduced without a referendum.

Day 8
Tuesday 13 April
Straining for a metaphor, the Conservatives launched their manifesto in a derelict power station where a famous episode of 'Dr Who', featuring the Daleks, was once filmed. David Cameron pledged 'people power', which would enable parents in England and Wales to set up their own schools. He invited the electors to 'join the government', but when Jon Snow of Channel 4 News went out into the streets to road-test this radical proposal, few seemed interested. There was little in the manifesto about how to tackle the national debt. Gordon Brown said he had been too lax with the banks.

Day 7
Monday 12 April
Labour's manifesto said there would be no increase in income tax, but made no commitment about VAT. When Gordon Brown was asked about this, he said that the party manifesto never mentioned VAT. Labour undertook to halve the deficit by 2014 through growth, 'fair taxes', and cuts to 'lower priority spending'. Schools and hospitals in England and Wales were promised greater independence in a manifesto described as 'Blairite' for its emphasis on public sector reform. Its publication was overshadowed by the decision of a court to award legal aid to three former Labour MPs charged with expenses theft.

Day 6
Sunday 11 April
Alex Salmond, on his last day as an MP, deplored the decline in the reputation of parliament and of the quality of speeches there. The Green Party said it had 'a real possibility' of getting candidates elected and the party was said to be in front in Brighton Pavilion. A poll of marginal constituencies in the News of the World showed Labour slightly ahead of the Conservatives, against the average of national polls. Nick Clegg warned of 'serious social strife' should the winning party in the election try to introduce severe spending cuts. Details of the party manifestos began to leak out, including a Tory pledge for greater patient access to GPs.

Day 5
Saturday 10 April
The Conservatives' plan to give four million married couples an annual 'tax break' worth £150 was described as 'Edwardian' by the Lib Dems. Vince Cable was scathing about business leaders who criticised the Government's plan to raise NIC: 'I find it utterly nauseating that all these chairmen and chief executives of FTSE companies being paid 100 times the pay of their average employees should lecture us on how we should run the country'. The mother of the computer hacker Gary McKinnon, who is threatened with extradition to the United States, said she would stand againt Jack Straw as a protest against the erosion of civil liberties.

Day 4
Friday 9 April
The two largest parties continued their row over public spending, the Conservatives claiming they could achieve savings of £12 billion by curbing IT projects and not filling vacancies, but Alistair Darling insisted that the Tory plans would mean thousands of job losses. Gordon Brown criticised the Conservatives' commitment to remove the profile of innocent people from the DNA database after three years. Nick Clegg said the Lib Dems would stop excessive bank charges. The young Labour candidate for Moray was sacked by his party for cursing leading politicians on a social networking site and describing the elderly as coffin dodgers.

Day 3
Thursday 8 April
The Conservatives announced a voluntary 'national citizen scheme' for 16-year-olds. David Cameron, supported by Michael Caine, said the scheme would be 'in the same spirit' as the former National Service. The BBC's chief political correspondent said: 'The image of David Cameron alongside one of this country's best-known and best-loved actors is something I'm sure Mr Cameron is delighted about.' Caine was once arrested for non-payment of maintenance to his first wife and their daughter and recently threatened to leave Britain rather than pay more tax. Nick Clegg said the Tories were planing a 'secret VAT bombshell'.

Day 2
Wednesday 7 April
In the last prime minister's questions of the parliament, there were bad-tempered exchanges on the increase in NIC. David Cameron claimed it would 'kill the recovery', but Gordon Brown said that business leaders who supported the Tories' alternative plans had been deceived. Because of the shortage of parliamentary time, cider drinkers will be spared a 10% rise in duty and teenagers will be spared compulsory sex education. Mr Brown promised to introduce fixed-term parliaments and to hold a referendum on PR. On a Conservative website, Mr Cameron is heard telling school-children that, when at Eton, he thought of becoming a lorry driver.

Day 1
Tuesday 6 April
Gordon Brown, after the Queen had 'kindly' agreed to the dissolution of parliament, was photographed with his cabinet outside 10 Downing Street. He said that he came from 'an ordinary middle-class family'. He then went to a workers' canteen where he laughed with unconvincing heartiness and said: 'Very nice atmosphere, lovely people, thanks for having us here'. David Cameron, who made his opening statement on the banks of the Thames in the face of a stiff breeze, said he was fighting for 'The Great Ignored', a group which seems to include the rich. Nick Clegg was accompanied for his photo-call by Vince Cable, who was recognisably of the human race.